Remember that article Mark Bittman wrote for the New York Times a few years ago recommending that we flip the script on pasta, and serve it with a ton more sauce? I like to think of this dish in a similar way, though instead of extra sauce, it's extra veggies. While stir-fried lo mein is typically noodles with some vegetables for flavor and color, this version comes out with veggies and noodles in almost equal proportions. That means it's packed with more flavor, in this case cabbage charred until sweet, along with meaty shiitake mushrooms, and big stalks of chives.

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a wide nonstick skillet over high heat until shimmering. Add mushrooms and cabbage and season lightly with salt. Cook, stirring and tossing frequently, until barely cooked through but still bright, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl. Add 1 more teaspoon oil to wok and return to high heat until lightly smoking. Add carrot and snow peas and season lightly with salt. Cook, stirring and tossing frequently, until barely cooked through but still bright, about 3 minutes. Transfer to bowl with mushrooms and cabbage.

To make the roasted chile oil, just toast a handful of whole Chinese chiles (or if you want, red pepper flakes) in a dry skillet until fragrant and ever-so-slightly smoking (about 30 seconds). Transfer them to a food processor with a cup of neutral oil, like canola, and whiz the whole thing up. Let it sit in a sealed container in the fridge for a week or so, and you're good to go. You can even top up the jar with more oil and toasted chiles every time you seem to be running low. Make some, have it on hand at all times, and it will revolutionize your mapo tofu, ramen, dumplings, stir-fries, and countless other dishes.

Wipe out wok. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil and heat over high heat until smoking. Add noodles and cook, tossing and stirring, until hot. Add cabbage, mushrooms, chives, and minced garlic. Cook, tossing, until garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Once you've mastered our technique for a crispety, crunchety coating on takeout-style fried chicken, you can easily replicate a number of favorites on the buffet line. To turn our General Tso's recipe into sesame chicken, we simply change the sauce, adding extra sugar and sesame oil and omitting the chilies. Be sure to toast those sesame seeds before adding them, and sprinkle them both throughout the sauce and over the finished dish.

There are some cravings that only that iconic white box of Chinese-American takeout will satisfy. We're no strangers to the stuff—many's the night we've spent in front of the TV, inhaling a truly shocking amount of beef with broccoli and fried rice. But, as much as we love the ease and convenience of calling in our favorite dishes from the neighborhood spot—ideally while riding the train on the way home, so the food is five minutes away once we walk in the door—homemade versions of takeout standbys are not only possible but often tastier than the originals they copy.

Good, homemade stock is the backbone to many a soup, and this one is no exception. With a ton of veggies and potatoes and a touch of cornstarch to give it body, this is a soup to get you through the rest of winter.

Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a wok over high heat until smoking. Add cabbage and cook, stirring regularly, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Work in batches if necessary to get the leaves nicely charred. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside. Add 1 tablespoon oil to wok and return to heat until smoking. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring regularly, until lightly browned and tender-crisp, about 2 minutes. Add chives and cook, stirring, until lightly wilted, noodle game Strategy|https://noodleinsight.Com/ about 1 minute. Transfer to bowl with cabbage.

Now, you're just ten minutes away from dinner. Flash stir fry the veggies in a skillet. Then add freshly grated garlic and ginger and pre-cooked lo mein noodles. Once the garlic and ginger are fragrant and the noodles and veggies have become tangled together, just add soy sauce. Then, get your chopsticks ready, and dig in.

This is a light, virtuous version of takeout lo mein that starts with a simple rainbow of vegetables: carrots, snow peas, Napa cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, and green onions. You can cut these up however you want (you can even buy shredded carrots for ease), but in my version I use a vegetable peeler to cut strips of the carrots, cut the snow peas into matchsticks by hand (the only fiddly part—you could just halve them), and shred up the cabbage, mushrooms, and green onions.

Perhaps the biggest key to making excellent dan dan noodles is to make your own roasted chile oil. When done right, it gets a rich, fruity, smoky flavor that none of the store-bought stuff can touch. It's really quite simple. Toasted Sichuan peppercorns have a sweet, citrus-like aroma with a mouth-numbing quality, while roasted chile oil brings on the heat.

Lentil soup is one bowl of brown sludge that I can really get behind. It hits that sweet spot of being not so unappetizing that you wouldn't even try it, but being just unappetizing enough that the mental shock of how good it tastes compared to how it looks is enough to send an endorphin jolt running through your system.